A Stirring in the Blood
by Marchwriter
Summary: It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so! Mark Twain. Estel's heart aches for freedom.


**Author's Notes: **A little snippet written both for Teitho's March challenge and as an increasingly futile attempt at keeping my endless backstorying of my newest project to a minimum. Beth, I blame you, in the most appreciative way possible.

**Disclaimer: **I am merely playing in Tolkien's sandbox.

A Stirring in the Blood

By: Marchwriter

_Imladris, 2944 T.A. _

"Breitho!"

Estel wasn't sure if he was calling to heel, warning all those within range to keep their heads down or merely cursing his luck. He burst from the mews, scanning the skies viciously for a glint of white and not finding it. Again. She'd taken off as if the very demons of Mordor snapped at her jesses. Again. And he was going to be in such trouble. _Again_.

"Estel?" Elladan was working the dogs in the fields beyond. "What's the stir?"

"Breitho's gone."

Elladan gave a brisk command to bring the hounds round and called over his shoulder in much the same tone. "Elrohir, your thrice-damned bird's on the loose. Again."

Elrohir didn't seem at all perturbed by this news. He never did. Instead, he draped the saddle he'd been oiling carefully over a stall door where it would not get scratched by passersby then headed into the tack room. Estel shifted itchily from foot to foot, still darting quick, searching glances at the far treeline. The blurred shadows of the firs looked dense and thick and full of hiding places even from here.

Abruptly, Elrohir was at his side, leash and leather glove in hand. "Well, come on, lad. Let's after her."

His brother's long strides tortured him with their sedateness. He felt like a puppy on the end of its master's chain, trotting a few feet ahead, then looking back, trotting ahead, looking back. _Hurry_. Why didn't Elves ever hurry? He didn't wait for Elrohir to open the gate into the paddock and vaulted the low, stone wall with the ease of practice. Except his feet skidded out from under him on the other side.

"Estel, if you've turned an ankle on the ice, you will be limping back."

"I didn't fall," Estel protested, wiping muddy and slightly stinging hands on his breeches. "Besides, the snow's almost gone on this side. If we hurry, she might only have gotten to the fringe."

Still, Elrohir would not be rushed. Little by little, Estel slacked off, if only for breath. His too-loud pants were the only sound in the wood. He didn't wander much in these parts unless he was with one of his brothers. His father said there were too many ravines and ditches and side-paths that could turn even his head after awhile. But Estel avoided it for a different reason.

The branches overhead hung suffocatingly close together, tightly entwined across half-lit avenues. The trunks all but squeezed him as he slipped through behind Elrohir, and the springy carpets of age-old needles muffled any sound. Not as menacing as the Old Forest which he had seen once from afar, but…protective. As if the forest wanted to keep everything caged within itself, and Estel didn't like that feeling.

He glanced at Elrohir, thinking, perhaps, he would say something if only to break the weighted silence, but Elrohir's face was set. Estel recognized the look all too well as the clouds gathering before a storm breaks. And break it did with a low rumble of thunder.

"Did you fasten the door?"

"Yes, Elrohir!" His voice came out louder and more defensive than he'd intended, but the silence was at fault for that. "Yes, I fastened the door. Yes, I made sure she was tied properly _before_ I fastened the door. Damned thing must have nibbled through the rawhide!"

Elrohir quirked an eyebrow at his language, but Estel felt too good about it to care overmuch. "You are beginning to sound like Elladan, Estel."

"Elladan is well-versed," Estel defended his brother. "I shall take that as a compliment."

Elrohir laughed at his audacity, but the thunder in his eyes did not quite disperse.

"I did fasten the door." Quieter.

Elrohir ducked under a low-hanging bough and said over his shoulder. "It was only a question. You needn't get upset over it."

"What if she's flown halfway to Gondor by now?" Estel asked, fetching up a stick. They'd gone fairly deep in already. He could no longer see the field behind them.

"Then you and I will be camping out under the stars for many a night," Elrohir replied.

"That thought doesn't displease me," Estel murmured, swiping at a hanging branch with his stick. A slender rain pattered, icy and abrupt, onto his back and head and spotted Elrohir's shoulders.

"Estel."

"Sorry." He snapped the stick and tossed it into the brush. But he wasn't sorry enough to let the silence return. "Are you going to punish her?"

Stopping in the midst of a stand of trees that didn't draw quite as close together as the rest, Elrohir withdrew a tidbit the size of his thumbnail from a slit pocket at his belt and balanced it on the glove. "She is but a yearling. You do not curse a child for upsetting a milk glass anymore than you punish a hawk for doing what instinct tells her she must."

It was a long speech for Elrohir.

"Tell me of how you found her again," Estel said, more to keep Elrohir talking than out of any real curiosity. Anything was better than the intense and far less interesting silence.

"I found her in the woods. Little more than a fledgling but already alone. Her mother had been brought low by a hunter's arrow, and any other nestlings had been taken by the wild."

Elrohir possessed arrow staves fletched with grey goshawk feathers, but Estel said nothing of it.

His brother whistled a short, rapid call. "She was very fierce and nearly relieved me of a finger or two. Even as small, hungry and overmatched as she was, she fought with all her spirit." A beat. "Not unlike other ladies I knew. My mother was a fine huntswoman."

Estel looked up at him. He could count on the fingers of one hand the times he'd ever heard Elrohir speak of Celebrían, who had boarded the grey ship long before his birth. In fact, Elrohir was unusually talkative today. Estel didn't say anything, afraid to break the spell.

"My brother and I when we were about your age used to tease that we'd rather take her out than the dogs." Elrohir smiled though, as always, his smile was tinged with a sadness Estel never quite understood. "She it was who taught us how to train birds. They would carry messages for her though I have never quite managed that skill. Perhaps one day."

"Have you ever taught anyone else?" Estel ventured though he thought he already knew the answer. The reason Imladris' mews housed only one goshawk was Elrohir was the only one who would train them, and he hunted alone.

Elrohir glanced at him. "No."

"Why not?" Estel asked, returning the look.

"Because your quarry is not caught through talk." Elrohir lifted his gaze to scan the canopy.

The firs dripped. A skylark whistled a few meters off. The forest remained unchanged. Estel shifted, and dried needles crackled restlessly under his boot heels. "Will she come?"

Elrohir said nothing. Estel took the hint this time and fell still. But it was hard, waiting. He always seemed to be waiting for something his whole life. Waiting to be high enough to reach the table by himself. Waiting to be old enough to hold a real weapon in his hand. Waiting for the adults, Men and Elves, to stop telling him he couldn't do this or that. Waiting to see what lay beyond Imladris' sheltered glen.

A slow burn flared in Estel's stomach, a fire that needed words to extinguish. "What if she doesn't wish to return? What if she'd rather not be in a cage for the rest of her life? What if she wants to be with the other birds who are like her, look like her and feel like her? What if she wants to be free?"

He bit the inside of his cheek. He hadn't meant to say so much. Especially not to his brother. He could feel the measuring weight of Elrohir's gaze on the top of his head, but he kept his on the trees as if still searching.

"The days are dark, and the wild perilous to the young and unlearned. But I would not keep her against her will, Estel. I believe she can learn much from me, and I from her, and we will work together in partnership. We could all use friends to help us in times of need. And a place of safety is never a cage for you are ever free to leave it."

"Unless others restrain you," Estel muttered without thinking.

"Do you feel restrained?" Elrohir asked, cocking his head as if at a distant sound.

Estel avoided his eyes. "I don't know why I said that, Elrohir. Please forget it. I've been a bit out of sorts, I suppose, lately. I don't know why."

"It is said that a madness takes some Men in the Spring. Much like hares." The telltale quirk at Elrohir's lips presaged the storm spending its strength.

"Whereas Elves only sing like the birds and stoically withstand the passing of the seasons," Estel said, mimicking his brother's slightly too-scholarly speech.

Elrohir cast him a warning glance, but a whir of white wings interrupted the expected reprimand. The tidbit of meat vanished in a flash as Breitho vaulted onto the glove.

Elrohir eyed her sternly. "There you are, beauty. Now how was that for a lark?"

She merely blinked her membranous eyelids at him in a very self-satisfied and unrepentant sort of way as she swallowed.

Estel grinned and cautiously stroked the fierce pinions, flattening them beneath his palm. He looked up only to find Elrohir watching him, that soft grey sadness in his eyes.

"What?" he asked.

Elrohir seemed to return from a long way off and shook himself abruptly, almost dislodging Breitho. "Hmm? Naught. Come on, or Elladan will have cleared out her shelter by now in the hopes of procuring yet more space for his precious curs."

The mews were quiet and smelled strongly of dog and straw. Breitho's cage sat back in a corner, cool and softly lit. Estel fiddled with a strand of hay as Elrohir wiped the bird onto her perch and tightened the leather thong that held her secure.

"Elrohir," Estel said, so softly he couldn't hear himself. But he knew his brother did. "I have something to tell you."

Elrohir fastened the door, tugged it hard to make certain, and turned to him. "Oh?"

Copper light streaked the earthen floor and gilded the hawk's cage. "I let her out."

"I know."

"You knew?" Estel's head jerked up.

Elrohir folded his arms and leaned back against a bale of hay propped against the wall. "Why did you do it, Estel?"

He did not sound angry. Estel glanced at the hawk who was dipping her hooked beak into a water dish. "I didn't think she could move that fast."

"Ah." Elrohir followed his gaze. "Yes, she does slip away from you, doesn't she?"

As they walked towards the house in a much easier silence, Elrohir, in a rare gesture, put an arm about his shoulder. "I have been thinking you are of age to travel abroad farther now. The Dúnedain are due to leave in a few days' time for Annúminas. Perhaps, we will go with them. You and I and Elladan."

"Truly?" He'd never been so far as Annúminas. "You'd let me go with you?"

Again that ghostly, grey sort of smile. But this time, it held a note of light. "You cannot be kept here forever."

**Translation **(from Sindarin Dictionary, Didier Willis, 2002)

_Breitho_—imp. form of breitha-, to break out suddenly (Read: Escape!)


End file.
